


Indexicality

by Alania



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Finnrey, Fluff, brief mentions of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 21:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9091681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alania/pseuds/Alania
Summary: This felt right, she thought. It felt like it belonged to her, from start to finish. This was how it was supposed to feel, when you lived on in spite of loss.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dietplainlite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite/gifts).



For Finn, it came from ashes.

He saw them floating in the breeze before he’d even realized where they were coming from. When he tilted his head up to follow their patterns in the sky he caught sight of the man, always in black, standing statuesque on the edge of a high cliff above him. He saw the circular plate in his hands, empty now. The breeze was strong enough to take what he’d offered it and make it disappear, but Finn got the distinct impression that Kylo could still see every speck of dust separately floating in the air, past what the human eye was meant to perceive. 

Finn crawled off of his rock, dusted his pants off, and trekked the long and winding path up to the edge where Kylo still stood, watching unseen ghosts in the air.

“What was that?” He asked, expecting no reply. Kylo might have returned to his mother’s side of the war, but Finn held little to no hope that the man would actually be able to find peace here.

“Ashes.” Kylo surprised him by offering the answer up freely, without a moment’s hesitation. “They were - important.”

For a moment, Finn wanted to innocently believe that those were the ashes of something Kylo had burned in effigy of his old life left behind. Then that moment passed, and he remembered that he knew better.

He sat down on the edge of the precipice, where his back was exposed to Kylo, and a tingle of fear stretched up the old injury along his spine. He didn’t know why he found himself trusting this man. He didn’t deserve it.

“You kept them?” Finn asked, swinging his legs back and forth in the air. “Isn’t that kind of...”

The gilded plate clattered to the ground just behind Finn, and he jolted rigid with surprise. He turned to look up at Kylo, and saw an expression he’d never thought capable of gracing the uneven, sharp contours of his old Commander’s face.

“They deserved better.” Kylo sounded angry - but not at Finn. Not at the score of enemies he’d killed, and then taken the time to burn and keep until now. He sounded angry at something else entirely, something he was trying to dig down deep from within himself to drag out and throw off the cliff along with those ashes.

“Yeah.” Finn agreed. “They probably did.”

He remembered this first day Kylo began to mourn for the people he’d killed, but he never bothered to climb up the cliff whenever he found Kylo there in the future, waiting for a miracle. It wasn’t possible to bring back the dead, or ask them for forgiveness.

But he appreciated that Kylo kept trying, every time the month turned, like clockwork.

* * *

For Rey, it came from flowers.

She sneezed; once, twice, four times total. She had no idea what allergies were, but there was something in the air that drove her to sniffle and wipe tears from her eyes. She was determined to find the culprit. Just beyond the temple wall that she’d been using to meditate against was a large, round stone statue. It had no name and she’d never questioned it until she found it suddenly covered in hundreds of flower garlands of every color, vibrant and overwhelming. She’d never seen anything quite like it, but as soon as she neared it the sneezing began again.

“Here.” General Organa handed her a square of cloth, and gestured to her nose. “Breathe through that. You’re not very used to flowers, are you?”

Rey had never thought flowers could do this to a person, but she’d had so little experience with them that she couldn’t really say for sure. She shrugged, and covered her lower face with the cloth in order to breathe again.

“What is all this?” She muffled out, still entranced by the beautiful sight in front of her, even if it made her eyes itch. 

“This is a memorial. A crude one, certainly. But it gets the job done.” General Organa’s hand slid across the smooth rock, gazing at it with bittersweet affection. “I come here, once a year. On this day, specifically; it’s the anniversary of Alderaans destruction.”

Rey let the cloth slide down off of her face as she breathed out a long, sympathetic sigh. “I’m so sorry,” She whispered. “I didn’t mean to-”

A sneeze kept her from finishing her apology, and Leia reached out to tug the cloth back up over her face. “You have nothing to apologize for.” She assured Rey. “It was a very long time ago.”

Rey turned her eyes to the stone, realizing now that it had crude, worn markings that made it look just a little more planet-like. Beside her, Leia bent down to her knees and made herself comfortable in front of it.

“But I never want to forget.” Leia whispered, now so focused on the memorial ahead of her that Rey suddenly felt like she was intruding. “This helps me remember their great sacrifice.”

She wanted to ask if the General would allow her to pay her respects as well, but Rey had never known loss as great as an entire homeland. She had no homeland, when she thought of it; Jakku was nothing of the sort. This tiny, out of the way planet on which the Resistance had relocated themselves was as close to a home as she’d ever known, or ever wanted to accept.

She backed away from the memorial, turning away once she realized Leia would not move from her position. The General had fallen silent with deep contemplation, leaving Rey’s absence unnoticed. 

There was nothing there that she’d ever meant to be a part of.

* * *

When they found one another, one of a million times that they’d come together like magnets for trouble (and each other), it was at the very end of a celebration, heralding some historic battle won for freedom long before either of them had ever been born. The embers of all the giant fires burning on the beaches were flickering less and less, until all they had left in them were pops of yellow floating into the air like fireflies. 

He’d been with the pilots all night, drinking until they couldn’t stand. He never touched the stuff, despite how much they teased him for his sobriety. Having a mind under the influence was not an appealing thought to him, after so many years held under the power of his reconditioning. He stayed sober so he could help them stand back up, find their way back to the base barracks, and clean up after their mess. 

That’s how she found him, picking up refuse on the beach sands like some kind of sanitation worker.

She hobbled through the sand on bare feet, picked up a glass bottle near the closest fire, and held it out for the bag he was holding.

“Need some help?” She offered, sarcasm lifting the curves of her cheeks. He grabbed the bottle out of her hands, helplessly grinning at that smile of hers. Then he dropped the bottle and it crashed within the bag, instantly shattering into a million pieces, and his smile disappeared into aghast shock.

“Uh.” He looked inside at the dangerous mess he’d just created, and then slowly, carefully, closed the bag up and put it aside. “I guess that can wait until later.”

“Why are you cleaning up, anyway?” Rey asked him, reaching down to grab a stick from the sand and shake it clean before poking the dying embers of the fire in an attempt to rekindle it. “There’s a droid already heading over here to do it. Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep like everybody else?”

“Hey.” He pointed at her accusingly. “You’re not sleeping either. I just like feeling useful. What’s _your_ excuse?”

She smiled down at the fire, narrowing her eyes as the embers flared up with a little more assistance than just her stick. “I saw you, of course.” She told him. In truth, she’d seen him hours earlier, but the sight of him surrounded by so many smiling faces and friendly people had her shying away to the other side of the celebration, where things had stayed somber and quiet. It wouldn’t do to come barging in on him and his new friends, all of whom looked like they didn’t understand what the term personal space meant.

Despite how fervently Rey wanted to fly, the pilots of the Resistance were a close knit group of social butterflies, and she never quite felt like she’d fit in.

“Me?” She could hear incredulousness crackling his voice into a higher pitch, as it often did when she admitted she liked his company. Somehow, she got the feeling that Finn never actually believed her when she said it. But he was always busy, and she was always determined to complete her training, so it never really mattered enough to care too much about.

“What’s, uh, what’s so important about seeing me that it’s keeping you up at night?” Despite his lack of self-confidence when it came to her, somehow he still managed to try and flirt, in the most awkward and inconvenient ways. She turned her eyes up to him, quirked with exasperation, and he grinned as though the sight of her annoyed was somehow more comforting than her honesty.

“I don’t sleep much, anyway.” She assured him, poking him with the stick instead. He grumbled out an indignant _ow_ and patted the spot on his (Poe’s, still) jacket where it left a tiny black pockmarked burn. “I haven’t slept more than a few hours every day since.”

She didn’t need to clarify the point where her sleep had begun to find trouble. Finn had been there to see the Hosnian system go up in flames. He’d been there to see Han die. He shared her nightmares more than anyone.

“I didn’t know that.” He admitted, dropping down to his knees and scooting over to press his side firm against hers. His arm draped around her shoulders, and she made no move to get away. He was one of the few people who had _that_ privilege, as well.

“We’ve been through a lot together.” He sounded sheepish, as though he felt guilty for what he was about to admit. “But it’s too easy for me to forget just how bad things got, when you’re around.” He picked up a handful of sand, and flicked it into the fire with a weak huff of mirthless laughter. “Sometimes - sometimes I feel like we could probably take on the entire First Order together and win, just you and me. I forget how hard that really is. How impossible that used to feel.”

It was an apology, of sorts. Somewhere down the line he’d missed the signs of Rey’s suffering, turned inward to keep her from bringing him down. The Resistance kept him busy, but her safety kept him carefree, yet he was sure he could have done a better job of taking care of her if he’d just paid _attention_. She needed something more than his forgetfulness, or his cheer. 

And so did he.

They sat together in the silence, marred by the sound of wood curling as Force-fed flames began to flicker and dance up from the dying fire once more. They reflected something more haunting than light in both of their contemplative gazes.

“I’ve been thinking.” They’d said it simultaneously. The sound of the coincidence jolted them, and they turned to look at one another incredulously before bursting into a healthy fit of laughter. Finn begged her to go first, but she insisted, and they fought for it just a few too many times before Finn finally gave in.

“Fine. I was thinking that I maybe want to do something.” The ambiguity of his statement made Rey burst into laughter all over again. “HEY! Let me finish!” He barked out at her, bumping his head against the side of hers. 

When she quieted down to nothing more than breathy chuckles, Finn continued.

“It’s kind of embarrassing to admit this. ‘Cause, I know we’re not real big fans of the Stormtroopers around here. Hell, I can’t even talk about my old squadron with the boys, I know that. But they were my family once, Rey. They did bad things for bad people, but they were my family.”

His eyes returned to the fire, but Rey’s remained on him, widened with shock. She’d never thought to consider just how much Finn might have lost, with Starkiller’s destruction. He’d wanted so badly to get away - she’d just assumed there was nothing there for him.

“And they’re all dead now. Just - all of them. I know, I know, we did what we had to do and I’m not regretful, I’d do it all over again if I had to. Honest. You believe me, right?”

He finally turned to Rey, panic twisting his expression with worry. When he realized she’d been watching him the entire time, his eyes flickered away to the side, unable to look at her. It was too easy to jump to conclusions. Too easy to see the shock on her face and read it as disgust. It was what he’d expected, after all.

“You think I’m a traitor. Don’t you.” He snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

When both of her hands lifted to pull his face back up to look at her, she kept them wrapped around his cheeks and held him firmly in place. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She scolded, with a voice too soft for him to ignore. “You know I’d never think that about you. I do understand how you feel. It’s not awful to mourn people who’ve done bad things, Finn. They had very little choice of their own, after all.”

He wanted to listen to her words, and give himself the right to mourn. Instead, he memorized the warm feel of her work-roughened fingers against his cheek, and told himself he didn’t deserve that, either.

“Tell me your idea.” She demanded, refusing to let go of his face. All at once, it went from enjoyable, to awkward.

“I want to do something in memory of them.” He muffled out, over-exaggerating the smush of his cheeks until she let him go. “Something private, small. But it just - it doesn’t feel like it would mean much if it was just me alone doing it for them. I mean, a lot more people died than just my friends.”

His lips pouted in a thick frown. “Am I being selfish for wanting to do something just for them?”

Rey bit her bottom lip, when his pout distracted her. She forced herself to look back up in his eyes, and shook her head. “Finn, you’re literally the most selfless person I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

Her compliment wrenched a weak laugh out of him, but it was enough to get him to stop feeling sorry for himself, and straighten up with determination. “Okay. I’ll do it.” But the determination made way for curiosity as he remembered he wasn’t the only one to have an idea. He cocked a brow at her, finally catching the distant look in her eyes. “What about you? What’d you want to tell me?”

Rey breathed out a laugh with her reply. “I should get used to this by now but, it’s not so very different from your idea, either. I wanted to make something like a memorial.”

Finn’s head cocked back in surprise. It really _was_ the same idea. How did they keep doing this to each other so often? “For who? The Hosnian System?” Han already had his own funeral and memorial set up; or else that would have been his first guess. He couldn’t think of anyone else Rey had lost, in her lifetime.

She shook her head and turned, pulling into herself as she balled up and prodded the fire. “No.” She whispered sadly.

He didn’t want to push her, so he waited. His hand brushed down the length of her back in slow, patient strokes of comfort. He let her sit there in silence, stoking the fire with her stick and her Force, and waited until she told him just who - or what - she wanted to mourn.

It was the pop of an ember that preceded her quiet, shaky answer. “It’s for my family.” She admitted, freezing Finn’s hand in place. She turned to look up at him, with the threat of tears in her eyes. “It’s time, Finn.” She whispered. “I think it’s time.”

Without another word, he twisted and gathered her up until she collapsed against him, nothing of the fight left in her when it meant he was holding her in his arms. Her head pressed hard against the plane of his chest but he couldn’t hear her cry, or feel her shake with a sob. If she was crying, it was silent, and strong.

Even in this, she wasn’t quite ready to let go.

Rey had no idea if her parents were alive or dead. She’d believed in them for so long, defying the dangers of a scavengers lifestyle and even the chance of freedom so many times. Holding on to that faith had made her who she was, until it was too much a part of her to ever let go of.

Now she’d found family, scavenged them up from a terrible band of rebels and traitors and freedom fighters, but she would never be able to accept them as her own until she let go of all that she’d waited for those many years ago.

Even if they weren’t dead, she had to mourn them. And she had to let go.

Finn kissed the top of her head, and held her as if his life depended on it, which sometimes felt more like the truth than it should. He felt the way she fit like a puzzle piece into every curve of his arms, and made sure she knew that he was there, all around her, and would never let her go through this alone.

“Together, then?” He murmured into her hair. He felt her head nod against his chest, and the vibration of a small, emotional voice against his shirt.

“Together.”

* * *

They picked a sunny day, and made a mark of it on a small numbered calendar because it felt more real when they wrote it down on paper. Rey brought a covered basket of flowers, and Finn gathered kindling and brush to take up to the low valley that dipped under the cliff where he’d found Kylo, his inspiration for it all. 

He dropped all his kindling and crackled up the dry leaves inside of it, then grabbed the match box from his pocket and held it in his closed palm.

Rey’s face was covered by a handkerchief, which she immediately explained when she saw the curious look on his face. She dropped the flowers on the ground near the fire, and then placed them one by one around the fire like a wreath. 

The air felt heavy and solemn. Finn wanted to ask her if they should have had some kind of tombstone, but he felt too embarrassed to say it now. Instead, he jogged over to grab a large rock, and rolled it over to sit on its side right behind the fire. The flames would scorch its surface when it was lit, leaving permanent marks against its face.

Finn thought that would be enough, for him.

“Should we say something?” Rey broke the silence with a whisper, looking down at the unlit fire and biting at her bottom lip nervously. “Like a speech?”

Finn wanted to say no, if only because he had no idea what to say. He shrugged, and took a deep breath; it was worth a try, regardless.

“We’re here to honor those who meant something to us, that are now gone.” His speech was stilted and awkward, and he shifted from one foot to another as he struggled with his words. “And uh, we hope that they can find peace, wherever they are.”

Rey nodded when he looked to her, his eyes begging for validation. “And we mourn them so that we can find peace here in our life, too.” She added.

It was the perfect conclusion to his awkward beginning, and when she said it, Finn smiled so wide it almost hurt for her to look at it. Pride was coming off of him in waves, and her lips matched his smile before she’d even realized it, helpless to the pureness of that joy.

He opened his hand and picked up a match, striking it against the box to light it and drop it into the fire. Nothing happened at first, which immediately set him to lighting up another match and trying again. By the time the second match hit the kindling, Rey’s hand had already lifted to face the fire, and help the flames along. 

Finn could see them rising unnaturally, burning with their own power as well as hers. Again, he smiled in pride, unable to help himself. She was _really_ something special.

The brush went up in flames almost immediately, but the kindling lasted a little longer. As the fire spread, the flowers circling it caught licks of stray flames every so often, and they too burned as quickly as the dry leaves within. The fire scorched the hard ground with a black circle, and it blackened the big rock Finn had rolled over, until there were long marks up and down its surface that looked like ghosts or sinister shadows.

Finn reached out and took Rey’s hand, sliding his fingers through every one of hers. She looked down at their entangled digits, regarded the warmth and intimacy of his skin pressed against hers, and then leaned her head to the side until it rested against his shoulder.

This felt right, she thought. It felt like it belonged to her, from start to finish. This was how it was supposed to feel, when you lived on in spite of loss.

When the fire had burned away all the kindling and flowers, Rey extended her other hand to the flames once more, simmering them down until nothing was left but firefly embers. She squeezed his hand and turned his way, breathing in the sensation of lightness that their little ceremony had afforded her. When she faced him, she realized his eyes had been on her for longer than she knew, and something deep was rolling within them. Finn had found his peace in what they’d done; she’d seen it in his smile, and felt it in the way his hand held hers. But now, he looked at her, and she saw no peace left in his eyes. 

He took a step. She felt like she should have backed away, but the fire was right behind her and besides, she didn’t want to. It was Finn, after all. Finn, who’d always come back for her. Finn, who’d stood by her as she mourned, while she’d done the same for him. He was trying to search for something very important in her eyes, and she let him, wondering if he had any idea how long she’d been waiting for him to look, to _really_ look. Wondering if he’d ever actually find it.

And eventually, he did.

The last thing she thought was the relief of knowing his terrible, awkward attempts at flirting might _finally_ be at an end, as he reached up and tugged the corner of her handkerchief, slipping it down off of her face just enough to give him leave to kiss her. Then she thought of nothing, because Finn was kissing her, and nothing else mattered. 

His lips felt just like his hugs, soft and warm and demanding. She had no idea how to reciprocate, but she tried, harder than she’d ever tried anything before, and eventually their teeth bumped against one another and it startled them, breaking the moment with laughter. They were so terribly new to this. So messy and unsure. The only thing they had was determination, but this they both had in droves, and kissing would be no exception.

“You wanna, uh, try that again?” Finn asked, his lips pulling into a quirky, embarrassed grin.

Rey threw her arms around his neck, until she hung loose against him, leaving her perfectly in range to keep being kissed as much as his heart may have desired. 

She nodded, just as the expression on his face softened into content. “If you like.”

* * *

Though he was sure that Force users couldn’t really control the weather, Finn still wondered to himself if Rey had nudged a rainstorm or two out of the way on that one single day out of the year when they returned to the scorched earth they’d shared their first kiss on, and burned the flowers, wood, and stone in memoriam of their lost families. She’d brought twice as many flowers this time, and her face was covered by a handkerchief once more. It couldn’t stop a few sneezes, which still shook her every so often as they stood there and started the fire.

As soon as the flames rose up towards the sky, Finn shifted to stand behind her, sliding his arms around Rey’s waist until he had her locked in his embrace. She leaned back, resting fully against him as they stood there, allowing the silence to mourn for them. Rey’s heart felt too light to mourn, and Finn’s embrace was too comforting for sadness. She closed her eyes, and breathed in the smell of ash and flowers through her handkerchief, committing it to memory once more.

Several hundred feet above them, dressed in browns and ash grays, Kylo Ren had once more returned to his perch to search for his ghosts, but found himself watching them instead. He met Finn's eyes and took a step back, reluctant to be caught. Finn's head twitched in a nod, a faint indicator that Kylo had done nothing wrong. If anything, he owed Kylo for provoking all of this, however unintentional it was. 

He wondered if Kylo would ever find the peace he was still searching for, or if Finn would find the man up on that rock for as long as he lived here. 

“What happens when we leave this planet?” Finn’s gentle voice breathed out, tickling Rey’s ear with its warmth. She turned her head to look at him, and he settled his hands flat against her stomach. “We can’t take this spot with us.”

“Yes we can.” Rey assured him. He could see the outline of her smile through the handkerchief, and leaned in to kiss it through the cloth. “It doesn’t matter where we are, when we do this. As long as it’s home.”

That was easy, Finn thought to himself, as Rey slid back into place and he brushed his fingers against the nearly imperceptible curve of her belly. As long as he had her in his arms, it didn’t matter where he was. He was home.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to leave this as a New Years Eve gift but it felt better to do it now. It's my first Finnrey, written for a lovely little multifandom contest that I was pleased to be a part of. 
> 
> Today's been one of the roughest days in a very long time, and I think for all of us it's been one of the roughest years of our collective lives. I'm wishing you all the best for 2017 and beyond. We need it.


End file.
